Title

Authors

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-1-2009

Department

Anthropology and Sociology

Abstract

Dialogical epistemologies of the self have been influential in rethinking the politics of ethnography. Although critiquing the centered Cartesian self as the locus of knowledge, these approaches focus attention on the researcher and assume the primacy of the self-knowing subject. This article draws on Peirce's argument that `man' is a sign to supplement critical theories of knowledge. Although Peirce focused on the semiosis of consciousness, we can apply his interpretive framework to think about other interpretants of the researching sign, the discourses that shape the meanings of the self as sign, and the hazards of the ethnographic encounter.